Glossary

Forward

Background and Objectives

Cause For the Development of the Elysian Fields Project

Short Sighted Remedies

The Elysian Fields Name

The Elysian Fields Project

Activities: A Call for Dynamic Environmental Systems Change

Masanobu Fukuoka and “Natural Farming”

Fukuoka’s Four Principals

Seed Pellets

Preparation of Seed-Pellets

Genrich Altshuller / TRIZ Technology

TRIZ 40 Principles, S Curves of Development,

Results: Further Pasture Sub-systems and elements employed

Quality High Tensile Wire Fence

Biomass Grid

Strawbale Structure Utilization in Conjunction with Bedded Packs

Strawbale Designs and Pasture as Housing

Pasture Infield Harvesting Apparatus, Trellis Curing, Feed Storage, and Feed out

Pasture Mobile Milking Parlor and Milk Handling Utilities.

Pasture Mobile Robotic Milking Stations

Pasture Slaughter Facilities

In Sod Step-In Tombstone Feed Bunks, Comfort Stalls and Stanchions

Invisible Sub-Perimeter Fence For Pastured Cows

Mobile Bunk-Line Feeder

In-Field Water – Air Conditioning

Laneway And Water Systems

Conclusions: Initiatives In Future Pasture Super System Design

..animal units between 10 and 10,000 or more

Questions and Answers

Forward, by Royal A. Purdy

I am frequently asked about the contents of this document and its contained subsystems; often explaining or comparing the scope of various next generation pasture systems conceptual design and planning, traditional western agricultural perceptions, and current pasture and pasture cropping systems limiting factors to elements being developed for, and / or which are currently contained in this private agribusiness experimental model known as: The Elysian Fields Project; the (edited) first published draft of which was written in December of 1997. People want to know what is perhaps in it for them.

The open–source architecture adaptation of the project model presented here, is a somewhat modified version (The business plan, financial data, subscription, and third party contracted managed inputs of the Clear Choice © Land Management portion have been deleted) of the current private sustainable agricultural based mission statement. The document remains however a viable illustration of the commercial dairy farm plan developed for our business (A. H. Tuttle and Company) own purpose; as such, it still happens to influence and directly reflect my personal intentions concerning agribusiness, statesmanship and that as a custodian of the land. The models subject matter exists as obtainable elements of personal direction gleaned or derived from personal study, inventive development, and first person application experiences or technical observation at both my families twelve working farms and the outside world; and I would hope, offers a rewarding, environmentally sound and profitable agricultural enterprise model for those who can and choose to consider applying the projects principles to their own circumstance.

Although the model is comprehensive by intent and design, not all the selected methods or numerous elements involved in the project and /or included here are thoroughly tested on or envisioned adaptable for every farm site and dairy farm enterprise situation our dairy farm or others business will encounter; however they all do, and will continually, represent my personal best attempt in approaching and developing practical applicable and theoretical solutions involving the modern logistical challenges facing area dairy and crop farm type agriculturalists, area municipal, and area environmental design planners in the present.

Among the many selected elements of the model, GRAZING PASTURES, and perhaps more correctly TREATING PASTURES AS ANIMAL HOUSING SYSTEMS is by far the strongest given priority, and in my (Finger Lakes) region of Upstate New York, U.S.A. (I believe throughout much of the greater Great Lakes Watershed region of the US and Canada, perhaps other regions) when properly applied, is often the highest order, and best of planned continual agricultural land use from an economic and environmental stance for both farmers and non- farmers alike; making for a truly marketable and valuable regional area asset of the highest order for all involved. I don't mean to be a pundit, and I fully realize that over time the model may become modified and / or it's direction (perhaps by so doing) may come to be in conflict or ere, for I do not pretend to be an expert administrator in such matters; I do believe however the greater known and developed elements of principle concerning long term maximized use of properly grazed and fully functional pasture systems to be basically quite valid and sound; perhaps to have conceptual attributes beyond the pasture itself. Sincerely - Royal Anson Purdy , The Elysian Fields Project

Background:

During the Blueshift Instruments ( a division of A. H. Tuttle and Company ) research and development of a dairy automation device called TESS technology (between 1983 – 1989) it became obvious that pastures would afford as genuine a dairy automation technology platform as easily as any standard available confinement system; but it wasn't until 1993 and latter when I was studying future expansion alternatives for Purdy View Farms dairy that I came to the realization that vast pasture systems did perhaps hold promise of a solution to our dairy animal housing challenges regarding dairy enterprise expansions as well.

In May of 1997 as I watched a pasture dairy farmer move his dairy herd from one paddock stay to the next, I observed the ease at which he and other graziers accomplished tasks infield to the benefit of man and animal. It was only then I came to realize pastures’ full potential as a housing medium.

Objectives:

The intent of the project is to discover and utilize methods and devices that will permit the broadest multi-use of pasture in a near sustainable manner.

Description and Rationale: By design, huge dynamic environmental benefits often follow proper modern grazing techniques. These qualities involving Soil and Nutrient Retention, Odor Reduction, Profitable Open Spaces Maintenance, and Wildlife Habitat improvement as well as that of enhancing the human spirit are said to be outstanding.

Relevance to Ontario County, New York State and the temperate Northeastern United States, perhaps elsewhere: The Elysian Fields Project is not intended for the faint at heart. Additionally it promises to be extremely challenging to manage. Despite its challenges, the project is however designed to be valid and consistent throughout many phases. For example, (carte blanche, all political camera angles aside) it is also my belief and desire this dairy intensive grazing pasture model work with any number of dairy cow equivalent animal units between 10 and 10,000 or more; If so, his model then could nearly mimic or surpass in terms of numbers, that of atypical large modern dairy cattle confinement models and their own virtuous implied net cost lowering capabilities, with as much overall validity for sustainability if not more so.

The Elysian Fields Project is not however limited to dairy cattle as dairy heifers, beef, dairy and meat goats, veal, chickens, ostrich/rhea/emu, pigs, and sheep, etc. (or any combination of on farm processing of produce, cheese and meat) would work quite well in the model also. The model invites seasonal production and allows for, indeed embraces, organic production methods as well. Fukuoka says, With very determined observation, there is always a way. Although his books are getting harder to obtain, I encourage people to read him, as his methods are omni-dimensional. It is up to us as individual grazers, and planners to realize the total benefits of grazing and make the most from doing less, to the benefit of man, animal and nature.

Cause For the Development of the Elysian Fields Project

Some important reasons for developing, utilizing and later choosing to publish the abbreviated utility elements of the model here for others, would be the personal heart felt desire and need to forward advise all dairyman landowners that, in part, I believe

A.) Many of the larger and expanding - traditional confinement dairy and other animal confinement systems, especially those involving any type of permanently enclosed animal containment sub-systems not utilizing properly managed pasture to the fullest regardless of date of design or establishment, eventually will risk failure socially, economically, and / or environmentally, absolutely, due to decisions based on existing inherently incomplete or flawed design elements and invalid considerations, some that have in the past, still are, and in the foreseeable future will continue to be promoted and indeed often mandated by our government services and private enterprise personal.

B.) I wish for the Elysian Fields Project utility methods to be further recognized, developed to a usable format, deployed and promoted. The results studied, the data recorded and viable content (if any) deliberately exposed to a ever wider audience of farmers and non-agriculturalists alike, as an added alternative means of animal and plant production and on a level equal to any and all recognized legitimate BMP practices, and indeed to be counted as such. The absence of viable and widely used commercial sustainable alternative production means, such as those presented in the Elysian Fields Project Model, only fuels the establishment of and often succumbs to, current, oft impudent conventional technologies, (and their traditional associated problems) such as suggested in the agri-commercial and domestic self promotion use of balances between and concerning synthetic fertilizers, chemicals, primary tillage machinery, and unbridled seed and plant biotechnology. In turn and as a result, these relatively high cost and highly supplemented myopic conventional agri-systems mistakenly endure as the only supposed available future means to render animal and plant production from solar and earth bound input energies and thus, ultimately, feed the world; while the truth is rather, that these Elysian Fields Project type alternative systems suggested virtuous methods simply where never truly developed and widely recognized to contrast and compare to.

C.) My personal farming interests are based in Upstate New York's Finger Lakes region ( U.S.A. ). This area, for many reasons, is a modern challenge for all farmland owners; for as active and non-active farming landowners, many are succumbing to suburban sprawl pressures in various forms and on multiple area fronts.

I make a living, in part, as a consultant, sales and service provider to vineyard, orchard farm and pasture landowners inquires regarding various high tensile wire ( Fence and wire trellis ) sub-systems utility design applications and uses. A very common observation of many of these various owners circumstance is the seemingly limited resolve to apply solutions available to them involving the exploitation of these various potentially profitable (i.e. pasture and pasture cropping) systems. Primary among the resulting misconception(s) and unknown to most, is that Pastures and Pasturing properly applied, is perhaps the highest order, and best of any land use.

Furthermore, I feel urban sprawl seems most often to breech strategic rural - suburban contact points and purge new territories based on traditional and reoccurring ( but I think inaccurate ) themes and assumptions involving farm profitability and environmental and land acquisition convenience. I believe that most of today's farm and non-farm owner persons alike ( that is to say, at least two sides of the issue ) located on or near these reoccurring themes of High Pressure or land use in transition areas are wholly unaware of, and so unprepared to take advantage of, changes in the profitable pasture paradigm shift that these pasture ( Elysian Fields Project) systems offer to all involved parties. As a result it is too often assumed by many or all (including observant interested 3rd parties) that acquisitions of nearby available farmlands are inevitable, and based mostly (if not solely) on the inaccurate premise of (or a lack of) current farmland profitability. See also: The Potential of Dairy Grazing to Protect Agricultural Land Uses and Environmental Quality in Rural and Urban Settings' by Bryan T. Petrucci, American Farmland Trust, Email: bpetrucci@niu.edu, Much of what is advocated by the Elysian Fields Project is highlighted in this one paper. There is much valid argument to allowing Pasture and Pasture Cropping (in the Elysian Fields Project style and methods) as a Special Use and even an allowed use within areas Zoned Commercial and Residential within the entire Finger Lakes Region, if used for the purpose of creating and maintaining a viable Holistic goal of open spaces and maintained by a pasture dedicated set of BMP's.

Short Sighted Remedies

When Best Management Practices fall short of intended goals

“Best Management Practices' or BMP's as defined by many government services (EPA, NRCS, etc.) are highly recognized technological designs and methods developed in an effort to solve common repeating environmental problems and circumstance. Regardless of technological scope and intent, these systems are not always exacting long-term solutions; they do sometimes seemingly evolve into stopgap type measures, and often in hindsight, become misdirected or misapplied actions altogether. It can then be understood or assumed that they, (these BMP's) can often with time, fall far short of original purpose or oftentimes may convert a circumstance to be regarded as actually being harmful or otherwise Not in the best interest of a farm entity, and thus the general public, or the environment. Oftentimes need to employ more dynamic long-term sustainable methods. Two recent cases in point:

( The Adams Poultry Case ) Recently in a nearby agricultural district, a longtime established poultry farmer experienced the significance of contradiction science firsthand in a most unpleasant way. USDA officials had in recent years advised this individual to develop a state of the art modern manure composting facility and spread that facilities developing chicken manure compost over a wider area of land to solve for the ever-growing presence of elemental phosphorus in his traditional farm field's soil tests as a direct result of repeated poultry manure applications on his farm over the many years. Fine; the manure in various grades of composted refinement was then spread over a larger area to eventually include newly leased lands. Shortly there after however, a long period of rain and wet weather's effects on the non-sod, tilled croplands prevented the usual protocol of heavy machine tillage that normally was used in this person's enterprise to till under and bury any newly exposed (machine ) ground-applied or injected manure effluent. Subsequently manure odors ( Environmental Air Pollution ) and flies overwhelmed the situation and the now newly acquired neighbors of the effected leased lands followed through with knee-jerk logic, and complained to local authorities. The story reached ( literally ) the world press. What this farmer warns us of after the fact and advises us to take heed of, is that often we tend to solve for one environmental problem ( in this case environmental soil pollution in the form of excess elements as measured by soil tests ), only to contribute detrimentally and sometimes in unforeseen ways to other problems ( his or her neighbors' environmental air quality, as measured by their noses ).

In short excessive containment commingling of manure is not always the right solution.

(The Southview Dairy Case) Ground Water Contamination alleged.

http://www.nyenvlaw.com/southview.htm

(Gorham Township events) Diminished Ambient Air Quality alleged.

The above problems are now locally notorious and classic among conflicts involving modern agricultural practices and can clearly be seen with casual observation to have been brought about mainly in these cases by the combined artificial acts of 1) commingling excess ( or excessive ) compound nutrients ( year-round containment in the form of a manure storage device) and 2) trying unsuccessfully to use this commingled effluent to supplement soil nutrients and crops plant seasonally peaked nutritional needs in an intense, relative short period of time, which resulted in a condition that perhaps temporarily, but predictably led to lowered surrounding air, ground, and water environmental quality. These scenarios will repeat themselves time and time again. Each time risking that steps will be taken to reevaluate the rules governing rural farm systems and I fear the farm systems will suffer, perhaps from adverse rule making that erodes little by little farmers current rights and privileges.

It has become difficult for any one entity to oversee every aspect the above problem disciplines; no one agency governs, oversees, or administers all programs. But any form of BMP (containment) correctness can be reduced to a theorem and so can broader ambient pasture utilization. Pastures tend to solve a broad array of environmental problems; further as compared to conventional confinement systems pastures change a great deal of the dynamics of potential problems, thus they lessen the focus of traditional agricultural environmental problems. I leave it up to each reader to judge and decide which is the best and most sustainable environmental management practice.

I recommend a proactive approach based on ambient pasture housing stays and care taking involving bedded pack loose housing and composting. I do not pretend that the degree and type of pasture utilization (All Season Nomadic Housing Systems) proposed within the project to be an exclusive, eager or easier managerial method; or for that matter without risk. I suppose no dairy farm can be regarded as an easy or risk free chosen path in life. Additionally, practitioners considering this path ( especially in early stages of the process ) need to use their best and clearest judgment as to the actual viability of each situation encountered by the model in balance with their own actual abilities. The model from the start is very management intensive. Only with continued practice and use will the methods become “easier”, routine and more obvious; yet envisioning working 365 days per year outside on pastureland, any one of 180 days of which may be in the harshest elements of winter or cold wet weather to be found, do nothing to arouse early subscription to the models plan, even among the person who wrote the model. In my (NYS) region of the country you look rather foolish setup outdoors in February and March every year, however you look rather like a genius come May, June and better part of the rest of the year.

I do feel all dairy farms choosing to utilize pastures to the fullest ample extent possible to their own circumstance can continue to be as comfortable, profitable and competitive an agribusiness venture as any dairy farm enterprise ever has been, hostile summer and winter weather included; if not more so. Getting beyond the above traumatic visions and nightmares; I believe the system can eliminate some traditional costs associated with dairy and cropping enterprises' and minimize or control some of the newly assumed fixed and variable developed costs inherent with these technologies utilization. I believe also that modern pasture dairy farm operations under pressure of urban sprawl but utilizing the presented models' precepts are capable of being (hugely) socially and environmentally rewarding for many. I believe the overall majority of farms near or in the path of municipal infrastructure development, industrial or residential can and will, if practicing and focusing on actual community holistic goals under this model early on in the planning effort, benefit their rural and sub-urban school tax base's positively and mathematically, to possibly include added agri-tourism and ability to sustain and maintain scenic quality of life guises as do Kentucky's Bluegrass Race horse farms, New York and California's Vineyards' Wine and Cheese Trials, Florida's Orange growers and Vermont's Maple Sugaring and Fall Foliage tours, etc..

Criticisms of these outdoors logistical housing methods abound. As rural but non-farm populations continue to grow, we are forever changing and modifying our communal understanding and perceptions of animal behavior, our traditional agricultural food supply methods, and our tolerance - definition of acceptable humane parameters concerning food production derived from animals. For example, few if any dairy farmer would argue against well managed outdoor Calf Hutch use and technology; non-farmers however may not see their use as being desirable housing. No animal should approach suffering, yet peoples attitudes of acceptable animal comfort tolerances runs the gambit and will have to be constantly dealt with, forever more, these systems included. As was stated above, the earlier on in community planning that this system is implemented, the better it will be understood and accepted by all involved, but even too late is better than not at all. Satisfactory is after all, arbitrary.

Proper costs of these animal pasture systems>>>>>

The bottom line is: In lay terms, if you sit down with paper and pen listing in separate columns all positive and negative aspects of this chosen system's goals; the plus (positive) column toll is constantly greater. Further and more importantly, when evaluating any two super-systems such as conventional animal housing or conventional cropping techniques compared to pasture as animal housing or pasture feed sources, the minus's or true real world problems and challenges involved in the total pasture systems goals vertical column become much, much easier and far more economical to solve for successfully within the confines of these sub-systems, often relying on resources already available within the super- system. Some people are seemingly surprised by this paradox and some less than open-minded, unchallenged, or perhaps ill informed persons have and will continue to totally reject it for whatever reason (one can expect this) Satisfactory result' is after all, arbitrary; further inquiry will often reveal, however, an incomplete understanding or total ignorance regarding the full extent of the subject matter of modern agricultural pasture potentials or I have found more often than not, a hidden agenda exists.

The Elysian Fields Name

The Elysian Fields' farm project name is derived from Greek mythology. It involves a story of a mythical situation of final judgment and sentence at the approach to a divided road. The road to the left is the path toward everlasting torment, to the right, lays the path to a promised place of everlasting blessedness; A place with gently rolling green fields and hills, that place is called the Elysian Fields.

According to this legend and truly in reality, we make choices throughout our life as to which path we will ultimately be allowed to be lead down or follow on our journeys in life; and based on this, we will all be judged.

The Elysian Fields Project consists of the following sub-systems:

A) Combined Andre Voisin Type Pasture Theory and Pasture as a Housing Medium of Royal A. Purdy.

B) An individual farm effort to espouse to Masanobu Fukuoka style Natural Farming Theory solutions on a modern commercial farm basis.

C) Adaptation of TRIZ Problem Solving Techniques and Theory.

D) Seed-Pellets and Sod Based Pasture Seeding, Pasture Cropping, and Pasture Feed Storage.

E) Nomadic Support Systems providing Total Access to pasture areas.

F) Holistic Environmental Planned Management of the above sub-systems.

The Elysian Fields Project

The in-field observational elements contained within the written thesis of the project have been helped greatly by, and evolved for the most part from, personal study of supportive grazing type reading materials, pasture walks practice and witness. Grass and Pasture western based writers contrasted to worldly third world economics driven or oriental farming techniques combined with others practical works including Holistic Planning Management - Problem Solving Methods authored texts', at first glance, seemingly unrelated insights toward enhancing the subject matter are what inspired me and have honed many of my ongoing attitudes and conclusions.

Without question, as I have spoken of many times before, short of my religion and family, of that which influences me, my goals and current understanding concerning sound economic and ecologically sustainable pastures and farming technique is laced heavily with, draws upon and is influenced greatly by, the various gleaned written study works by and about, only a small handful of worldly writer’s I consider to date of truly dynamic value; of those, one by the name of Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese writer, and particularly a gleaning of his challenging Natural Farming disciplines, and revelations of the importance he placed on the spiritual aspects of farming are what inspire me foremost and I would include among the offerings, his book titles The One-Straw Revolution, The Road Back To Nature, and especially The Natural Way of Farming and the new but non-reviewed Wara-ippon no Kakumei Soukatsuhen - Nendo Dango No Tabi

And of a secondary reliance to Fukuoka for me, but having perhaps equal lasting dynamic influence and importance, being the greater “ Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, TRIZ ( A Russian acronym for Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch, or a far less commonly used, but having the same meaning is the western language TIPS acronym ) created by the late Russian author Genrich Altshuller, a former Soviet Navy Patents examiner. Found is his book translated from Russian entitled And Suddenly The Inventor Appeared and also latter revealed in his many other documents and that of other colleagues who have written describing the ongoing development of the methodology of Genrich Altshuller's works involving TRIZ ( pronounced Trees). Variant systematic forms of similar creativity study include ARIZ, and ASIT.

Additionally a minor (recommended) assumption is made that the reader is already familiar with the important pasture and grazing concepts within the scope of the text of Andre Voisin contained in his written work Grass Productivity and / or the excellent exploitation of that work done by William Murphy in the book titled Greener Pastures on Your Side of the Fence; or grazing management planning works by Allan Savory. I'm sure other popular pasture based writers will yield tactful, informative writings, and will infuse a wealth of practical advice for persons interested in their pastures from a low-cost inputs in-lined point of view, which is similar to the intent of the Elysian Fields Project.

Pasture inclusion and utilization of totally automated pasture milking systems beyond simple milking parlor technology is advocated and advanced within the Elysian Fields Project, and current status can be easily studied and monitored at the robotic milking website (www.roboticmilking.com), while low cost strawbale and alternative construction concepts, utilization and construction techniques can be studied and monitored on any one of the strawbale housing listserves available and / or read about in a number of very good books on the subject.

The Elysian Fields Project is designed to effect and build soil profiles ambient as Masanobu Fukuoka would suggest; however, Dr. Elaine Ingham does excellent work describing in her own way her understanding of the individual roles of soil microorganism parameters in the ongoing works she calls The Soil Foodweb. Conveniently available on cd or described at the Soil Foodweb website. You may research other known sources, still readers would do well to fully understand the described scope of microorganism role concepts, and in light of conventional farming aftermath effects, then be able to better evaluate a coarse of action for their own individual fields and crops..

Lastly, again I think valuable Holistic Resource Management type grazing concepts can be found in a book / workbook(s) by the author Allan Savory and his wife Jody Butterfield entitled Holistic Management, A New Framework for Decision Making. I think Savory’s work concerning his management planning methods, ties it all together and combines well with the above subject matter; and I hope perhaps renders it much easier to understand and implement.

I feel an important element common to most all the above authors ( Fukuoka, Savory and the TRIZ methodology authors ) are that all start with the end result in mind.

Activities:

A Call for Dynamic Environmental Systems Change

So what promise does a fellow named Altshuller and his life-works messages have for farmers and pasture persons? Could a system be so designed to be utilized year round? Conducive to the Elysian model is also the overlaying question of how to implement these developed rules with those of a person named Fukuoka and others as applied to the overall sustainable future of crop and pasture environments. I should think to be useful and correct, these or any rules should stand the test of time and be valid for both small and large producer alike. In an attempt to locate and eventually validate presented future pasture and crop farming solutions, it was predictable that one should also be able (and willing) to look to valid solutions of the past and perhaps within other disciplines that may have inadvertently been cast aside in history. Fukuoka and Altshuller realized this and revealed to us the techniques to follow and use.

I have an Uncle Al, an engineer type who taught me at a very young age in my career, and Altshuller writings too seem to support, that most inventions are simply re-combinations of existing systems. When I suggest to an individual farmer that he house his entire dairy herd outdoors in enhanced housing totally on pasture, I had better have some inventive solutions in mind, perhaps bolstered by historic solutions, for obtaining that persons ultimate goal. I believe Triz suggests that Pastures can, with careful though and action, be made ideal, and so it is logical to assume, technically there must be ( perhaps historic ) methods available or obtainable, to accomplish that ideality within patterns of predictability.

It seems important that many of the above author's subject matter seem to validate and compliment each other. In short, all stress and / or are disciplined to seek out and remove that which can be done without. Each of these authors cited strives to achieve ideality by making final use of only what is necessary within any given system ( in my case pasture based dairy systems, if only and at least on a field by field basis ); all reveal the relative truths within a given system or super system and all reject that within a system which impedes ideality, even at the expense of being intolerant of modern day and conventional agricultural norms and inputs thus reverting to older and historic ways of doing things. And this is my point; not much of what we do today in my region of the world regarding agricultural production (dairy included) is honed down to the bare essentials. That, in the end, costs you, I, and everyone! Current systems are rather often times in place simply to attempt to validate the current oft chosen technology path, no matter it seems the degree of continuing err of these long-standing or established approach(s).

I also wish to cut out and do away with the perception of dairy pasture farm work as that of drudgery and toil. Walking and observing natures pastures is or can be pleasant work, and it is on that basis that basic utilities such as water - electric and proper laneway systems should be brought to pasture land-plots and thus allow a broader utilization of them. We should store well-made, high quality seasonal excess feedstuffs in the pasture system itself and not wastefully transport them first out of , and then back into, the immediate pasture area.

Figure A-1) The authors father George R. Purdy and a neighbors bull, while touring a local farm

Masanobu Fukuoka and Natural Farming

( Masanobu Fukuoka born in the year 1913, lives in Matsuyama, Island of Shikoku, Japan. )

I first sampled the written works of Masanobu Fukuoka in the spring of 1980 in a book ( The One Straw Revolution ) that was given to my wife by a college friend and I fairly ignored it. A few years later, upon revisiting this written work, I came to believe that although he ( Fukuoka ) is not particularly a pasture person per se ( in his book The Natural Way of Farming Fukuoka speaks of the perversion of monoculture pastures ), and I myself am NOT a vegan, I had by then come to find his works on what he calls Do-nothing type crop propagation, his caparisons of natural and scientific farming philosophies, his natural sustainable farming techniques and finally the implied capabilities of their individually modified applications and adaptations over time, however abstract to casual interpretation, where then and are absolutely intriguing if no small challenge in the literal technical sense to apply to modern day western type agricultural expectations; I believe also they ( these implied capabilities ) have, for all, a valid and respectable place in our considerations for lower cost sustainable natural farming production methods and our modern next generation pasture based model goals. (Note: I feel Fukuoka's pasture data was flawed in his book The Natural Way of Farming and so too I believe, his and other theorists generalized negative perception and his conclusion of pasture systems as that of a necessarily doomed monoculture). Fukuoka developed several main system techniques of farming due to his belief that: the ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings (Fukuoka 1978) Pastures, I feel, are totally inline with this, his concepts.

It is very important to take time to note here that I personally feel the Elysian Fields Projects methods are or will be more of a holistic apogeal goal for many individual agricultural and pasture systems and often will require a transition phase(s) of perhaps month’s or years of time and careful thought and testing before being implemented fully. Though generally regarded as a pillar of modern “organic farming and gardening type practice, seldom will he ( Fukuoka or I, within this model ) use the term organic in reference to endeavors concerning Fukuoka's methods; rather he himself very often and perhaps more correctly refers to his working techniques as that of natural farming, rather than organic. ( MOA or Nature Farming is a similar but different theory along this same type-farming theme and there are others) At no time does Fukuoka imply or demand a practices standard; his four rules are rather, simply truer demanding goals. Fukuoka implies in his writing it must always be assumed that after any type human intervention, true natural forms ( of farming ) are often some time in returning; for instance, Practitioners may decide to transition through MOA Type Nature Farming( or others ) to achieve Fukuoka type Natural Farming.

Many current practitioners of Fukuoka's methods practice only a degree of his four or five principles. Many more farmers world-wide have tried the methods, and in time given up for lack of success and returned to better understood ways of conventional farming; of these farmers, many say they would return again to practice the theology if and when the proper methods are developed and better known or understood. Natural Farming rules being his master, Fukuoka realized failed attempts at natural farming would initially often be the case even on his own farm and that variations and degrees of application do often occur; he mentions that the act of returning fully to true nature can continue evolving over 100 years or more.

Criticisms of organics too abound, but most of the organic plans cited by critics from all corners are seldom if ever making use of true Fukuoka type Natural Farming techniques; and also on reflection often make gravis mistakes concerning those systems natural form status. For example, I have many times read of organic gardening failures presented something like this: We planted our garden and the entire broccoli crop was ruined by a something bug; or a massive weed infestation. They include the fact they started with deep tilled soils, planted an otherwise mono flora crop and expended fruitless conventional type farming energies to the point of their choice to abandon the organic project.

Fukuoka's Four Principals

Fukuoka's life thesis ( From the 1978 book The One Straw Revolution, first published, Shizen noho wara ippon no kakumei in Japanese, in 1975; And the latter, The Natural Way of Farming, 1985) utilize four basic goal principles worth our further study regarding sustainable pastures and cost evaluations in pasture farming. In the later written work, Fukuoka added a not to be ignored fifth rule that mainly concerns pruning and the natural form of fruit bearing tree growth; note that the common practice of grass clipping is relevant to most photosynthesis management within pasture growth forms and grazing animal rejection, and so Fukuoka's fifth rule may find relevant application also at sometime in that guise.

Fukuoka’s four main basic principle goals:

The first: NO CULTIVATION. No plowing or turning of the soil. The earth cultivates itself naturally by means of the penetration of pasture sod by plant roots and the activity of microorganisms, small animals, and earthworms. At most shallow plowing, rotary or hoe tillage is all that is necessary in seedbed preparation, but even this is seen as undisciplined. Fukuoka's first rule makes use of unique seed pellet cropping techniques ( explained latter within the model ) that have been successfully used for decades throughout the world and in most climates, totally without tillage. Essential Soil / Seed contact is derived by means of these seed pellets, an attribute of their manufacture method. Microorganisms laden (soil) flora, etc. may need to be reintroduced to soil from like fields afar or propagated from other near or on farm areas and incorporated into the pellets compound during manufacture.

The second: NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER OR PREPARED COMPOST. If left to itself, and / or a valid regimen is followed after conventional farming technique intervention, soil flora eventually regains and maintains its fertility unending and naturally, over time in accordance with the orderly cycle of plant and animal life. Leguminous green manures ( Clovers and Grass, etc. ) are grown as a basic cover crop in certain situations. Soil test evaluations perhaps identify and help select for methods most appropriate for a given soil type(s). With undisciplined use of commercial chemical fertilizers ( which many folks believe is in part a historic grand hoax placed upon western agriculture, and currently survives somewhat unmolested under the guise of a green revolution), influences on some plant crops historically may have selectively weakened their genomes growth sustainability without their use. If this should be seen as a wholesale condemnation of synthetic fertilizers use or soil testing it is not! However, it is a condemning question as to the extent of the current and continued degree of use and methodology direction of the same in light of the subject matter. Again as above, farm produced soil amenities in lew of commercial fertilizers may be recognized as the most useful during future transition phases.

The third: NO WEEDING BY TILLAGE OR HERBICIDES. As a fundamental principle, weeds should be purposely controlled by various degrees of challenge type management, but not eliminated. Fukuoka asks What is a weed? As a rule in cropping situations, the more dense, vegetative and complex the flora, ( I feel as in pasture sod ) the less likely that any one weed will dominate. I personally feel a weed is anything a grazing animal will not eat. As I'm sure this rule at first sight is presently intolerable for most farming folk’s experiences in weed free corn, grain, vegetable, and many other production cropping situations and for harvesting of these same crops, so too am I sure that it poses no serious threat to most pasture growers management style concerning pasture sods ability to convert solar energy to feed. Tillage of any type is an open invitation to grow a weed. Further, residue such as straw is returned to the field as much as possible without machine soil surface interdiction; Simple passive compost ( long straw ) is often used as a cover material, but as a protocol rule, in most circumstances there is no need to make special use of this or any other prepared compost.

The fourth: NO DEPENDENCE ON CHEMICALS. Nature, left alone, is in perfect balance. Harmful pests in the form of insects, plants and diseases are always present, but do not occur in nature to an extent, which requires the use of costly poisonous chemicals or interdiction biotechs. It seems Fukuoka did in fact use plant agents pyrethrum and tobacco ( organic pesticide tea's? ), and light Mineral oil emulsions in his garden settings. On a grander commercial scale he also mentions a Pesticide Compounding Chart which made utility of relatively non-foreign and more natural occurring, less hazardous (yet technically poisonous) compounds such as Light Phosphorus Agents, Lime – Sulfur mixtures, Sodium Bicarbonate, Hydrogen Peroxide, and Copper – Zinc solutions (and perhaps other methods) in a type of integrated pest management usage against specific diseases and pests. In light of this; again I think valid use of effective locally acquired microorganisms during a phase transition time period on select soil types to hasten the return to a more natural state is often called for. Largely, I think too this rule speaks ( directly or indirectly ) of his avoidance of that involving monoculture-cropping techniques and that method's inherent consequential evolving pests. In many situations pastures can be maintained in a dynamic but stable climax of complex species variations, reflecting the relevant management of many present plant types and over time are not often a simple monoculture flora.

To my knowledge, perhaps after a sufficient transition phase time-period, grazing pastures alone need not violate any of the above principles. I suggest as graziers we consider passive Natural Farming techniques on our pastures first. When considering pasture ( and perhaps in time other pasture cropping techniques ), it is within the concept of this project that overall one should not be concerned with that which he or she has little or no control. A dairyperson or farmer may choose to use increasingly less fertilizer and pesticide ( to the economical and environmental point of using little or none at all ) and perhaps increase reliance of ambient conditions, for the period necessary to reach a maximized limit factor and stable productivity on select soil types without having to add either.

In the next chapter ( Part B ) is examined the seemly odd seed pellet, perhaps the most powerful and important element or sub-system of the Elysian Fields Project. Normally associated with arid and brittle climate challenges of crop propagation in dry desert climates visited by Fukuoka; I continue to address a need for examining this little seed pellet in greater depth and for possible use as a economic pasture, feed – pasture cropping, and later a production cropping tool. Utilizing adapted use of broadcast fertilizer spreading vehicles that are very common and available on many farms; these implements are one of the lowest cost pieces of equipment to own and operate; they also can and do make excellent planting machinery when used upon properly prepared seedbeds, no one will doubt this. Seed pellets you will learn can eliminate any further need for manipulated soil seed contact via tillage, as they ( these seed pellets ) insure their own soil composite contact, and so according to this systems theory, with management, renders primary and secondary tillage increasingly obsolete. The challenge before us in Ontario County (where I live ) as I see it, is to design protocol dairy-farming cropping techniques and methods for intended use on our pastures perpetual sods so that excellent establishment or reestablishment of high-grade pasture or rotational pasture cropping or other crops of choice prevail and are maintained without tillage. I believe seed pellets afford us a tool toward that goal.

Seed Pellets

One of many important applications of Fukuoka's written theories of sustainable agriculture in part involves the practice of on farm manufacture and use of what I believe he referred to as Seed pellets or some third parties later called Seed ball technology. - Simply put, these are the wide-ranging methods of encapsulation, generally in a compound mix of red clay, discriminated site specific - farmer acquired - local ambient microbe inoculated soil, perhaps other mixed selected organic matter, and of various seed(s) according to ones cropping needs. By various methods this compounded mix is then moistened and via hand or automation, forming into seed laden clay pellets, which are then allowed to dry. Later, the now hardened finished pellet is broadcast seeded over minimally prepared crop ground as you would a frost seeding of clover, but without the need for a frost – warmth – frost, induced repetitive heaving action. This broadcast seeding method (Mechanical or by hand) remains one of the lowest cost functions on a farm, and the sometimes necessary (mandated) additional required husbandry acts involving a long cut straw mulch where weed elimination desires, micro-climate or erosion control, etc. in crops are concerned, utilized by Fukuoka can have several proactive effects on seed use and crop establishment costs. Further I believe with determination, it is a (untested) method adaptable to most any seeded crop.

The Seed-pellet sowing methods can eliminate in many cases the need for primary and secondary tillage and can with effort be used to achieve a timed germination (an ambient soil moisture dependent trigger effect) and thus affect ones propagation success over that of typical broadcast planting (such as frost seeding) results alone. Eliminating the reliance of the soil heaving action utilized by more commonly known frost seeding procedures to produce essential soil seed contact, seed pellets thus broaden the time frame allowed to using broadcast-seeding methods successfully.

According to Fukuoka encapsulation in this compounded clay slip coating has been shown to render the contained seeds fungicidal and anti-pestiferous (bird, rodent, insect, etc.) properties. Also, due to this type containment, seed-pellets convert all type of seeds in a compounded mixture of seeds otherwise having differing size and weight, to have a consistent shared relative seed mass density. For aerodynamic and ballistic purposes this means that when used for broadcast seeding purposes, a light grass seed would have the same (ballistic, as in coverage pattern form) density as a clover or small grain seed of various kinds. Knowing this, a broadcast seeder ( or ones own bare hand ) alone is used for planting crops with no discernable difference in coverage patterns; a critical technical attribute.

Seed Pellets then lay dormant on the soil surface surrounded by the compounding matter until which time as there is sufficient ambient soil moisture and conditions to release the polymerization bonds of the clay compound; an added blessing in dry years. Only at this desired, predictable state and period in time will germination be triggered and begin in a properly designed seed pellet. Perhaps most importantly, and again, because of the seed pellet's precondition (encapsulation in clay), vital soil - seed contact is virtually assured, and can be enhanced further by compounding the clay from added modifiers such as farm specific soil organisms, soil inoculants, sugars as a chemical feed for early survival of rhizobia and other additives to achieve, direct or assisted desired seed germination results.

Again these methods may not be for everyone. Further testing needs to be done. Graziers should go slow, experiment in their own way and perhaps decide whether or not to exploit this novel but promising model method. I believe Fukuoka's methods individually and perhaps regionally modified, have merit as an alternative seeding method in most all our pasture seeding as well as cropping applications. With adaptation perhaps one day it will replace traditional tillage and crop tooling methods.

And a good place to start reading and learning of the overall production methods for making seed pellets is to read Fukuoka's books.

In my personal life's endeavors, I am trained, licensed and nationally involved in the commercial design, development, and deployment of aerial display type pyrotechnics and explosives ( Display Fireworks ). The process, automation, and production of clay-encapsulated seeds (seed pellets) is very similar and identical to, and on my farmland, utilizes the same land space and hardware resources as that of pyrotechnic star manufacture. I've worked with and studied various methods of enlargement of clay-seed pellets, all pertaining to that of Fukuoka's principles of incorporating seed into hard and soft round clay pellets utilizing methods and techniques I assume he borrowed from the older established oriental pyrotechnics industry. These so called rolling, pumping, and cutting techniques involved in large scale clay seed pellet production on farms are for most, all easily and successfully self-taught.

Preparation of Seed-Pellets

Some of the simplest methods in preparing the seed laden clay pellets on a lab basis is to mix the desired seeds (compounding more than one type of seed in the same seed pellet capsule if desired) in at least a five to ten fold quantity of well-crushed red clay and / or locally obtained clay slip, local soil humus (Source of local effective microorganisms) and select local soil, add water to the consistency of wet dough, form into a loaf or brick shape and dice it with a knife into cubes or further hand roll into pellets; Or, knead the compound to pass through a half-inch mesh screen and drop on a paper sheet to dry for a half-day. One precaution to mention, it is reported Ultraviolet rays within direct sunlight exposure of this prepared compound can be harmful to some of the rhizobia contained on it's surface and perhaps within; so mixing, drying and storage of pellet compounds should be done in a shaded area and do not prolong surfaces exposure to direct sunlight. Again, at this point if a more uniform pellet is needed, then simply shape mixture into rounded pellets by rolling by hand or for large-scale manufacture in a drum mixer so designed.

Or, a more commercial and controlled scale construction technique is to place water moistened hard shell seed in a large rounded pan or drum mixer. Continue spraying the seed with a (light atomized) coating of surface moisture while maintaining a rolling and flowing motion of the wake of rolling seeds. If the mass clings to the sides of the vessel it is too wet and more dry seed must be added. In alternate applications sprinkle this rolling seed mass with red clay powder while maintaining alternate spraying water mist onto the mixture with a fluid atomizer, all the while remembering to keep the seeds moving with a rolling motion. The seeds will become coated with clay and will grow in size. In time the pellets can be enlarged adding any intended grass seed, soil or other organic matter to the compound powder. Avoid too much organic matter in this mix however, as pellets can become too soft, and perhaps crumble prematurely or allow rodents or other pests to consume the seed. You require a hard uniform pellet formula if a mechanical broadcast seeder is to be used behind a tractor or other. These examples are not all encompassing, as there are no doubt other considerations, methods, techniques and formula of contributing ingredients worth investigating as well. The time has come to demand of ourselves a proven new experimental approach and the utensils needed to accomplish this goal involving these simple planting methods. Again, experiment.

At this time I cannot intelligently speak of the economic payback in any situation if this technique is used, as individual parameters and results will vary from farm to farm and field to field, but it does appear to be an avenue to exploit if personal farm, university or commercial scale experimentation shows it to be of continued value on a cost of production basis as compared to more common conventional cropping systems. As indicated elsewhere, broadcast type field operations are among the lowest cost in agriculture. I am nearly positive that seed pellet technology could be exploited as a conservation friendly seeding method and perhaps thus correctly argued to have social value as well. I can speak however only of the ease to which the manufacture of these seed pellets could be scaled up and these methods brought to commercial type volumes at home on one's own farm or in local commerce at minimal expense of both time and money.

One important note: I interpret Masanobu Fukuoka as not one to be against any size of standard agricultural equipment utensil, in fact he seems to point out the very utility and efficiency of size and scale often enough. However, Fukuoka is very quick to point out too it seems that the degree to which we will bend to unquestionably utilize our most invasive of farm equipment and more traditional conventional farming techniques is beyond insanity. In many cases it, (the technology need) I believe (depending on the item or intended use), is a manifestation of the commercial equipment salesman and equipment dealers, going back nearly 100 years or sometimes more. When we compare then these two systems, it seems to me that we are close to watching the twilight of conventional systems and the dawn of an evolving seed pellet agri-technological norm.

Whether one is running power machinery harvesting crops or tilling the soil by primary and secondary machine method, the molecular silica compounds present in grass and earth are chemically and molecularly destructive to and harder than the perishable metal utensil contact appendage surfaces of most all standard machinery systems and so wear them down and destroy them in short order and at high fixed and variable costs.

Excessive horsepower is another variable expense we endure. I personally ask, why are we ( or.. who is ) continuing to design our agricultural ( tillage, planting, and harvest ) sub-systems to rely so heavily on increased horsepower, heavy primary and secondary tillage methods and hybrid synthetic pesticide chemicals? The time has come again for Graziers and other crop producers to demand access to lower cost, lower horsepower, non-or less intrusive utensils and methods if they are to be used at all. As an example ? (i.e. instead of the pesticide effect of mowing, spraying, or tilling weeds, we might first consider perhaps re-evaluating what constitutes our list of weeds, applying intense cover crops or rolling weeds as a control), first choosing to remove, via management the element that the weed survives and thrives in; remembering here that Fukuoka relies on minimizing rather than eliminating weeds.

We have all seen where a vehicle wheel track has encroached repetitively on a single infield pathway, whereby many of the trodden flora stops growth. Can we design our crop and pasture stands renovation protocols for this stress function? Following further Fukuoka's written books and his four main tenets, we might think to first reexamine and maximize available double cropping techniques and developing a few of our own unique local pasture systems ambient flora, while further challenging ourselves to resist ever displacing our pasture sod; a primary goal of the Elysian Fields Project. We cannot expect to change a given soil type to a higher type order; a desert or lake type sand may never covert itself to a Silt or Clay Loam soil; but pasture sod, properly maintained with animals grazing and hoof action should be allowed and should be expected logically to grow in an increasingly complex desirable organic matter; forever increasing in a given soil type to maximized effective efficiency, converting what is laid and maintained upon its soils surface. This then I believe too, in part, is a form of the ambient composting that with careful thought, doesn't require a need for extra work that Fukuoka wrote of.

Next is a snapshot of ambient ideality.

Genrich Altshuller / TRIZ Technology

Concerning the subject of problem solving TRIZ type theory (and ARIZ, the algorithm methods used to solve and thus automate Inventive Problems), both developed and written about in part by Genrich Altshuller, I am not an authority; however for me it was being exposed to and studying these, what I have deemed, fascinating subject matter that helped shed new and revealing light on the many approach's and prior solutions available to the Elysian Fields Project model. Ideal products that otherwise may have remained unknown and gone unrealized for lack of a recognized solution in the many fields acted on in the endeavors of everyday modern pasture dairy and other type farming; Quite often TRIZ science enables one to unlock hidden value and gain insight from resources already present within the given system.

See Organic TRIZ on the Farm by John Terninko, http://triz-journal.com/archives/1998/12/c

TRIZ is the recognition that technical systems evolve towards an increase of ideality by overcoming contradictions and can be implemented with minimum introduction of outside resources and without any drawbacks.

Perhaps most relative to the Elysian Fields Project is the pasture as housing title that tends to create pasture systems by substituting conventional system challenges with unconventional system challenges via solutions derived from the pasture system itself. It is driven from the following TRIZ formula for ideality.

Ideality = (Benefits / (Costs + Harms))

Systematic Problem Solving as addressed by TRIZ methods have been applied and are directly applicable to a wide array of disciplines including chemical and mechanical engineering design, environmental resources, strategic municipal resources and political planning.

Triz methodology does not result in confrontation but rather derives results that are based from contradiction inputs that ultimately result in forming disciplined end solutions that are very often not based on compromise, but are (astonishingly enough) found uniquely suitable to all.

Pasture Problem àStandard Problem àStandard Solution àPasture Solution

For me, the continuing study of the inventive science of TRIZ is fundamentally different than the other types of problem solving methods available, as they do exist. Many of the popular historic and written industrial development methods on bestseller's lists today, rely on brainstorming types of thought processes. Triz on the other-hand starts with the end result in mind. Briefly what this science reveals and reflects is 1) Most if not all known historical proprietary and intellectual property science falls within the scope of a very few (40) enumerated basic principles of prior knowledge. 2) Problems and their solutions were often repeated across industries and sciences 3) This pattern of prior knowledge across industries and sciences involves predictable S curves of evolutionary development.4) Most if not all true new innovations use industrial and scientific effects from outside the field of study where they were developed.

Altshuller (TRIZ) proceeds to define five levels of inventive problem solutions:

Level One, Apparent or Conventional Solution, solutions that can be derived by anyone within that existing industry, expertise, or specialty. They compromise 32% of all solutions.

Level Two, Small Invention, reflects improvement of an existing system, usually at a compromise of the system. They compromise 45% of all solutions.

Level Three, Substantial inventive Invention or Improvement inside technology or existing system. They compromise 18% of all solutions.

Level Four, Invention Outside of technology. Involves generation of design using science not technology. They compromise 4% of all solutions.

Level Five, True Discovery and major science advances. They compromise 1% of all solutions.

TRIZ 40 PRINCIPLES

Altshuller had TRIZ draw from these 40 principles:

1. Segmentation Example: Milk House, Utility Room, or Modular parlor expandable from single six to double six to double twelve, etc.; and segmented pasture into paddocks.

2. Extraction or Taking out Example: Manure compounded compositions are composted prior to spreading, thus eliminating much odor.

3. Local Quality Example: Strawbale walls covered with white wash to be reused as soil amendment when finished as a wall function.

4. Asymmetry Example: Hoop buildings (Strong Arch) as temporary structures in nomadic housing situations.

5. Combining or Merging (Integration) Example: Electrified High Tensile electric fence wires.

6. Universality Example: Heat exchanger used to remove Heat from Milk to Heat water used in water heater during milking.

7. Nesting Examples: Wooden Modular parlor design to contain vital utility systems within their inner structure;

8. Counterweight or Anti-weight Example: Overhead tube ventilators add support to tube when inflated.

9. Prior counteraction or Preliminary anti-action Examples: Properly designed bracing system in a fence; Buffers used in water or feed rations

10. Prior action or Preliminary action Example: Arrange fence line to contain excess pasture feedstuff for feed-out at a latter date.

11. Cushion in advance or beforehand Example: Set out feeding or watering delivery stations at predictable pasture locations.

12. Equipotentiality Example: Ramp milk cows to level convenient to persons in stall barn or milking parlor.

13. Inversion or The other way around Examples: Mobile-milking platforms instead of stationary facilities; Bring the mountain to Mohammed.

14. Spheroidality or Curvature Example: Circular shaped cattle holding pens and loading instead of linear rectangles.

15. Dynamicity Example: Mobile structures can be positioned to take seasonal advantage of optimum summer breezes or winter sunlight.

16. Partial, overdone, or excessive action Example: Milk Pumping station fills completely with milk prior to discharge to make less use of the systems components.

17. Moving to another or new dimension Example: Plot a planned path that a mobile milking system complex takes around a pasture system to minimize total area utilized.

18. Mechanical vibration Example: To stimulate milk flow at letdown, increase milking machine pulsation rate to ultra high frequency for a short interval at attachment.

19. Periodic action Example: A light or proximity sensitive switch is used to turn off lights when the sun rises or when people are not in an area.

20. Continuity of useful action Example: Endless pasture rotations, but at various intervals from 12 to 40 days.

21. Rushing through or Skipping Example: Increase speed of rotation, while following up with another group of (dry) dairy cow or skipping a paddock altogether.

22. Convert harm to benefit Examples: Winter dairy animals on a sacrifice paddock used the following spring to plant renovated pasture crops or Turn Lemons into Lemonade

23. Feedback Example: Inserting a flow-sensing device in a pasture water line to inform when leaks may be accruing within the pasture system.

24. Mediator or Intermediary Example: Electrically charge a temporary sub-dividing fence by attaching to and taking power off of a permanent perimeter fence system.

25. Self-service Example: Arrange spent or used bedded pack areas to correspond to areas needing fertilization or pasture renovation the following spring.

26. Copying Example: Make water stations and pasture divisions standard within the super-system so that utility such as portable fence and water stations can be made lighter.

27. An inexpensive or cheap short-life instead of an expensive durable one Example: TESS system uses individual inexpensive udder protection devices instead of slower regimented routine personnel assignments or costly computer controlled cleansing routines.

28. Replacement or Substitution of a mechanical system Example: Harvest and store feedstuffs in pasture locations near to where they where first grown and where they will be fed come feed-out in non-growing seasons, and thus eliminating the need to re-handle feedstuffs at feed-out time.

29. Use pneumatic or hydraulic construction Examples: Provide two layers in a hoop barn plastic cover to contain air as an insulation and friction / noise damper; Ride a circular milking parlor on water bearings.

30. Flexible film, shells or thin membranes Example: TESS system uses a membrane to protect a cow's udder from foreign matter.

31. Use a porous material Example: Seed pellets used in the Elysian Fields Project to seed pasture crops are composites of clay, seed, and ambient soil amendments designed to be both hard and durable to survive mechanical distribution methods and soft and porous to retain or utilize ambient moisture conditions.

32. Changing the color Example: The have light colored buildings in summer and dark colored water delivery sub-systems to retain heat in winter.

33. Homogeneity Examples: Fenced off buffer strips near pasture open waterways can be safely pastured for short durations under ideal conditions when they present themselves; solid select pasture species of grass and or legume may be chosen to maximize a feeding rotation relative to each species optimum growing traits.

34. Rejecting, discarding and regenerating parts Example: Utilizing in field regenerative bedded packs instead of permanent concrete flooring systems.

35. Transformation of physical parameter and chemical states of an object Examples: Turn a bedded pack area into a compost pile; Render whitewashed strawbale walls into vital and useable soil amendments; Use rubber mats on walking surfaces.

36. Phase transition Example: Feedstuffs such as pasture hay harvested and then stored on trellised infield storage devices are allowed to obtain a proper moisture content over a longer period of time resulting in a shorter overall harvest time period for the farm operator.

37. Thermal expansion Examples: High Tensile wire has tensioning springs placed in-line to compensate for seasonal thermal expansion and contraction; Frost seeded grasses and legumes need the soil thermal expansion - contraction cycle present only in springtime to self plant themselves.

38. Use strong oxidizers Example: The use of ozone generators to sanitize cow drinking water of a substandard quality.

39. Inert environment Example: Bedded packs are allowed to compost in place, with proper added amendments, the resulting product is no longer an odor problem at distribution time such as with stored manure spreading.

40. Composite materials Example: Mobile milking facilities are composite made to be strong and save weight and thus make moving them easier.

S Curves of Development

Altshuller suggests all we have discovered in our world history of inventive and technological systems (and that would inherently include pasture and cropping systems) can be defined and stated as a contradiction of two or more conditions; and all these properly stated contradictions will have predictable evolutionary outcomes based on drawing from a bank of prior knowledge of historic solutions until such time as that system becomes ideal and reaches a state of Ideality. In other words, all systems will evolve along S curves of developmental changes until such time beyond this final state, as the system becomes something else, another newer (if different) system develops; and the start of another S curve of development begins.

ASIT

TRIZ technology has been successfully taught to every age group from primary school on up. Ron Horowitz's simplified teaching method called ASIT (Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking) utilizes the following reduced TRIZ techniques: Unification, Multiplication, Division, Breaking Symmetry, and Object Removal. This simplified system is an excellent starting point for any age student to gain an insight into systematic innovation and I highly recommend it.

More on ASIT can be found at: www.start2think.com

In the discipline of pasture utilization we choose to apply TRIZ and or ASIT object removal techniques in an effort to change the farm super system dynamics significantly by removing as much of permanent conventional systems as we can in a given situation so that we can take full advantage of the Closed World of the pasture system; by doing so, we tend also to remove most all that was associated and problematic with that prior type system (including costs) in an attempt to achieve ideality.

Results:

Further Pasture Sub-systems and elements employed

Perhaps one of the more controversial single or group of elements in the Elysian Fields Project document as measured from the standpoint of critical observer's comments (both farmer and non-farmer, large and small operators, grass pasture and confinement persons alike) involves the adaptation of the select nomadic capabilities of the technologies described below. Exoteric Seeding methods don't tend to offend too many people, non-interested folks simply choose not to employ them; but based on the number of persons who have voiced spoken outward exception (in the form of opposition) to the following, these methods (due partially to their open ended numeric capabilities) seemingly do often offend some; and that is surprising, as this systems design (to remain as environmentally compatible a system no matter the size of the enterprise) I think is it's most simple enduring value.

Since first being transcribed from private documents in late 1997 and the early months of 1998, the Elysian Fields Project Pasture Model continues to front its share of challenges regarding the involved theoretical sub-systems optimism success outlook and that of their intended uses. I am not a professional writer, nor a consultant to the environment per se; I am simply an individual expressing my thoughts regarding future pasture systems development and on what I had, at the time of that first writing, developed and considered to be an ideal suggested direction for development and further study; it is perhaps the result of my families historic heritage, an element in the Quaker's -Friend's Society' roots and due in part to my own proprietary discretions that the projects work remains largely unpublicized to date; my views on the subject elements merits respectfully remain, however, fundamentally unchanged.

For the production of meat and milk derived from (solar energies) pasture, true economy and versatility may never be fully utilized in our lives until we are willing to continually combine the conventional and non-conventional elements currently and historically available to us in complete, valid and complimenting ways. We need also to be willing to cast off that which does not meet these newer criteria or challenges. To facilitate this, in part and in most cases, this model attempts to treat pasture as a year round housing medium as well as a year round high quality fresh and stored feed source.

Quality High Tensile Wire Fence

When I first considered development of the Project I decided to learn all I could about High Tensile wire fencing methods and their proper installation. I went to work for a large Northeastern United States fencing company for two years. What I found out is High Tensile Wire Fencing is a terribly forgiving technology and as such many installations both professional and layperson installed do with time gravitate to the expertise employed in their installation. This can sometimes give HT fencing a shadow of being labeled expensive”

Bio-Mass Grid

Willow (or comparable bio-mass) trees grown in gridline patterns on pastures to facilitate manmade windbreak hedges and a local farm source of biomass for use in carbon sequestering and manure effluent retaining open-air bedded pack construction. Expect some pasture solar loss derived by this practice; however pasture nutrients are derived from further deep within the ambient root zone of trees.

STRAWBALE STRUCTURE UTILIZATION IN CONJUNCTION WITH BEDDED PACKS.

One hundred years ago, as settlers came to find their Westward migration had brought them to the what would become the wheat fields of Midwest United States there came to occur a shortage of home building materials, ample time and money enough to build a standard wooden frame or log home while at the same time establish ones family in a new land with oftentimes hostile weather elements. These people then employed various building techniques imported from Europe that meet their immediate needs. Sod houses and strawbale building methods still bear witness those very structures everlasting attributes of insulation and structural value. Combined cost factors present then and now, prevail even today; that method is still going strong today and referred to as straw-bale construction. I am not an advocate of removing straw (elemental carbon) far or permanently from the host field, so I do not support the current straw bale home or housing trend, but I do see merit in any on farm utility use of the same strawbale construction technologies.

Now days, in Europe and Asia, and all across the United States and Canada, primarily among the southwestern states here in the U.S., there is a rising number of individuals intent on using Strawbale construction for housing construction, and as they (sometimes alone) envision a process of sustainability. I happen to disagree with many modern day straw-bale home builders and theorists, the notion that large amounts of organic matter should or can be carted off any land plot and later referred to as being particularly nearing environmentally sustainable in the long-term; however I can and do advocate strawbale use where and when it (the elemental carbon fibers) can be produced and later retained by a given or near by land-plot such as in a situation of a dairy pasture utility alone or with a crop rotation. Outdoors windbreaks and enclosure structures can be designed, built and used successfully in many areas as alternatives to other type animal housing and dairy utility buildings, resulting in a farm-produced asset.

Perhaps the most utilitarian of these designs is the simple bedded pack. A proper stable design of contents such as manure, straw, wood chips, and saw dust will in time yield a rich controllable substrate. It is perhaps wisest to design this sub-system so that the in pasture bedded pack may lay fenced off and dormant for a time while the compounds are composted in place; this actually adds to the availability of the nutrients utilization. This practice would be expected also however to assist significantly in lowering potential manure odors.

Strawbale Designs and Pasture as Housing

In an attempt to provide alternatives within the physical plant design protocol elements of the dairy portion of our local Elysian Fields Project, the model includes extensive use of such things that tend to lower the overall cost of production by allowing the element of mobility. Nomadic mobility methods, it is thought, have the advantage of releasing one from the often un-realized constraints of permanent farm structures and buildings; of these methods, farm produced straw-bale fabrication is one most favored method considered. It can be argued that there happen to be many low cost sustainable building material mediums available to choose from with similar qualities to strawbale fabrication; but I can think of no other sidewall mediums that are derived on the farm to the same recyclable degree as is strawbale technology. Traditional straw bale from grain crops normally undergo seasonal storage prior to use and during the duration of need. Added managed utilization of straw ( bales ) in a useable utility prior to their normal destructive demise as a bedding material is a somewhat unique phenomena.

Straw-bale construction basically consists of stacking straw on a foundation (or not) as you would bricks and then pinning them together with one of several methods, such as with a fiber post or rod rammed downward through the top of each coarse of bales or wire ties, and forming a low cost structure or enclosure unit. For more permanent weather tolerant sidewall structures, building methods may require a plastering of cement or better yet lime – sand or clay mixes, forming when dry a composite yet in-field recyclable skin” that double as traditional soil attribute amendments.

Manifesting as one or more of the following instrument forms, chosen straw-bale structures can be as simple and effective as: Solar and sunlight shielding walls providing shade, located on the paddock ground currently utilized by rotated animal herds in summer months, temporary housing directed at specific pasture areas needing concentrated manure enhancement or a well planned desirable solar collecting area, wind break and/or all weather protection location in winter months.

A good friend recently ordered a nationally recognized brand agri-building be built on his farm property. He has paid a goodly sum of cash for it and forever more will be taxed based on a conventional non-movable structure; don't worry, he is a rich man. I am a cheap man, but I like nice things. If he had asked I would have steered him toward the following technique: if stationary is your thing - build and pay taxes forevermore on a barn consisting exactly of one good solid regionally appropriate designed roof with ample overhangs, consisting moreover of one or two planes and nothing more; then use strawbales as structural in-fill to make up the side walls when seasonally appropriate. A hoop or green house structure could be made to utilize these type infill straw walls in a similar fashion; the upper scale semi-permanent type buildings are not that much cheaper to buy initially, but they could perhaps be moved from one locale and relocated to the next substantially cheaper than a solid metal roofed structure and with less labor and technical problems.

Straw is essentially fibrous rock.. Pile a large stack of strawbales outdoors and invite the local U.S. armored division to park an Abrams Tank size military vehicle atop it all; the ground beneath the stack will begin to yield far in advance of and long before you completely crush the straw. Additionally strawbale walls are measured as to have a thermal insulation rating in upwards of R40.

Designed for lowered cost yet versatile building of year-round modifiable structural, (concept includes both Green-house or hoop type structures, etc.) and movable (non-structural) open-air walls, hot and cold weather microclimate shelters and all-weather windbreaks, straw-bale is farm-sourced carbon and returns to the soil as such in time. Affording all that is needed structurally while in use, and at the end of service, the dismantled (now spent) so designed temporary straw-bale walls or fixtures become compost or as a second use, an absorbent animal bedding and with a natural mineral lime-based protective plaster, (if used) eventually returns its fiber and acquired mineral content attributes entirely and harmlessly back to the surrounding nearby soil strata.

With extensive use of both high tensile perimeter and portable wire fence and portable water- feed delivery systems, a dynamic inertia of technologies begins building and coming into play by making nomadic mobility designs an achievable asset. Seasonal or year-round designed animal housing sub-systems would provide more versatile mid to low-cost inputs for big conventional type systems net output results. I see well-designed models as profitable sustainable attributes to animals so acclimated to what would otherwise be semi-harsh open year round environments. No longer should an animal's ability to walk a given distance (back and forth) to an area within pasture via lain-ways to a milking station or water be a limiting factor; the milking station and most, if not all, utility attributes should move with the animals, and / or to within a few hundred feet of them at all times. Properly applied sub-systems will only enhance existing dairy facilities if used. Of coarse this understandably plays very well on negotiations regarding rented land-plots also.

Also, the current (I believe with time, increasingly invalid) time constrained practice and high cost of having to first contain (as in manure piles and lagoons) and then handle and perhaps re-handle the manure nutrients (spreading, injecting or spraying manure) from the flooring surfaces of all permanent structures as in conventional barn manure handling systems becomes minimized or obsolete regardless of current and future Local, State and Federal Certified Nutrient Management Plans, CAFO regulatory architecture and too seasonal nutrient ( manure ground application techniques ) amendment rules. Make no mistake that a true non-destructive nutrient containment medium system can be designed for. The proposed systems, (mimicking nature) maximizing a versatile mobile building unit space or open field area containing manure (nutrient) and other high retention elements such as a bedded pack of sawdust, wood chips, willow bio-crop, waste paper products, or straw, etc. (carbon) that the animals utilize in predetermined and managed allocations, and then relocating this housing to new pasture or new near-pasture ground and repeating the stay, replace conventional containment and permanent animal housing systems. Individual intentions need never be so absolutely nomadic, however it opens new opportunities parallel to the degree that one can be so versatile, if only for a short seasonal or other temporary period of time.

For its part, in conventional barn systems for large numbers of animals, a well-maintained bedded straw pack would most often be my first choice (after pasture itself and absolutely over free-stall based housing) for a confinement type-housing medium of all age of dairy animals including both during lactation and dry cow rest periods. While being used directly on pasture, such packs could be timely inoculated with whatever soil enhancement additives (such as rock dust, lime or other mineral) that are known to be deficient (due to soil tests) in the immediate vicinity of the area of stay. As the herd moves away from this area in a seasonal rational grazing environment, any structural and cover materials are removed, the bedded pack and the contained ambient enhancements are, at an appropriate time, simply raked or otherwise distributed over the immediate area with a light harrow or other means until distributed completely; or if not too deep a deposit, seeded down and left alone to stabilize and compost in place. An excellent concept in areas where stored animal manure odors may be a problem. Adhering closely to Fukuoka's written philosophy here, he states, one can naturally make common sense use of compost, however one need not and should not work hard to achieve it. Compost should be created ambient by animals on the areas where that compost intends to be used. Perhaps this is a model for new broader type agricultural equipment and dairy facility design.

If in ones circumstance she needs to be thinking of new low cost agricultural housing alternatives, such as during dairy facility expansions or acquisitions, please consider first straw-bale construction design as growing in favor. Well-designed exterior walls as have been stated provide excellent insulation in both warm and cold climates and can be made to withstand (milk house, utility room, office or other etc.) wet and hostile environmental conditions as easily (perhaps on a as designed temporary basis) as any alternative conventional construction, most times, if designed properly, at a fraction of the cost. Addressing perceived fire hazards; It is widely recognized that when subjected to flame, properly made strawbale structures do not burn as such, but rather slowly scorch, due in most part to the lack of oxygen to sustain flame within the bale core itself and too the bales inherent ability to insulate against heat transfer. A straw-bale structure will burn, but it takes hours to consume itself by flame and the fire code survivability ratings are among the highest known.

Pasture Infield Harvesting Apparatus, Trellis Curing, Feed Storage, and Feed out

For hundreds of year's man has utilized haystacks, Haycocks or other so named piles of field dried, bundled or loose hay, fodder and grass for feed purposes. With horse and wagons the mature cut grass hay or feed was pitch forked or otherwise loaded onto the hay wagons and these simple feed stuffs where then brought to the barn facility for re-handling, storage, and still later, handled again to be fed out as required. While acknowledging that the periodic harvesting (as many as five times) of surpluses of forages within a pasture or other hay forage based system is recognized as often essential to maintain highest quality dry and high moisture hay forages within that pasture or any other haying system, I (and most all graziers) reject the thesis that it must always be conducted utilizing conventional dry or high moisture storage techniques and / or conventional high horsepower machine based harvesting systems as we currently know them regardless of current feed preservation technology and attitudes. To see clearly the evolutional future in pasture harvesting and feeding designs, I think we need to look back it time and again consider leaving the bulk of forages within the pasture system that produced them; this model suggests cost savings by bringing the animals to the feed year-round, just as we do when we seasonally graze.

Design our pasture hay harvesting to deposit dry hay forages in-mass and infield on an elevated, so designed roofed or open trellis system consisting of a pasture located lattice made of common tall fence posts and a matrix of high tensile wire on which the forage mass would be placed by means of current dump wagon and forage pickup head technology or common fork loader tractor. The systems potential begs for a dedicated commercial designed harvest trellis-loading device.

Then feeding dairy animals directly from these forage trellises year-round. While observing the valid solutions of the past in Andre’ Viosins book, one can see pictures of small wooden A frame field trellises used to facilitate in field feed storage or forage drying. We might expect then to perhaps design a similar more enduring in field hay drying and storage system. A minor challenge as I see it is to design the system so that natural air-drying is maximized, while harvest horsepower requirements are minimized.

PASTURE MOBILE MILKING PARLOR and MILK HANDLEING UTILILITIES.

To better assist facilitation of the above, I offer the little used but known concept of milking in mobile mass within the pasture system. In the seventies a neighbor in our town installed and utilized a nearly all-wooden, prefabricated stationary milking parlor with a large degree of success. Site preparations at the time simply consisted of installation and hookup to buried utilities, and the deposit of some crushed # 1 or pea size stone utilized as a floating slab type foundation. The unit manufactured to be assembled in individual sections, was actually was very mobile. Additionally, and at about the same time, a major milking equipment systems company (Germania ®) offered dairyman purchasing permanent dairy parlor systems from them and undergoing disruptive renovations to their existing milking facilities space, much the same type temporary wooden and relatively mobile prefab milking parlor. All manner of Milk House, Milk Tank Bulkhead Room, Utility Room, and Dairy or Slaughter facility could be built this way. Study the PMO and health rules in your area.

For use within the Elysian Fields Dairy Model there is a design for an identical yet affordable farmer fabricated, milking parlor that could be built for any and all type (Cow, Goat, and Sheep) dairy animal; epoxy-covered plywood over a wooden frame in construction and modular component in design, these units are moved with common forklift or loader-tractor fork attachments. This milking parlor unit component design can begin as a single sided unit, expand to a double sided swing-over, and later be expanded again to a diamond paragon or made smaller if or as the desire or need arises; The units can be seasonally allotted from, and in time, back to a permanent conventional free-stall or milking plant facility. So low in cost are these units, a dairyman not wanting to bother moving them could simply have several of these units strategically placed among his pastures nearest permanent underground utilities, interchanging only the higher cost milk contact surfaces and handling device units (milking claws, receiver jar(s) and pipelines) and putting all milking hardware support utensils (vacuum pump, water heater and conditioning, etc.) hardware in a devoted mobile utilities vehicle in combination with a temporary bulk milk transfer tank handling - refrigeration unit, and taking it all along with the rotation groups as needed.

For the techno deprived, through-put oriented dairy-person, regardless if he or she intends to move a dairy apparatus or not, this all weather and low cost mobility condition in turn lends itself well to temporary facilities use and equity building for young couples on a rented farmland. Mobile machine milking parlor systems theory ( perhaps in combination with a low cost greenhouse type enclosures ), and yes, presently field or pasture robotics comes to be inclusive in the model and is a useful consideration as a natural technological progression.

Blueshift Instruments © offers their own version of this parlor as a custom-made component kit for several dairy breeds. (Dairy Cow, Dairy Goat, Dairy Sheep )

PASTURE MOBILE ROBIOTIC MILKING STATIONS.

In 1983 Blueshift Instruments © began development of a low cost method to further automate the more repetitive animal and human routines involved in and associated with the dairy parlor system milking process. This 25 year old R&D Company sought to eliminate or lessen the repetitive human involvement in 1) sanitary udder preparations routines, 2) machine milker unit attachment routines, and 3) post milking teat-dipping routines. The envisioned (device) development involved a retrofit that would attach to existing automatic milking parlor ATO devices (in this case a Model B Germania ® takeoff designed for dairy cows); the prototype design process concluded and the resulting test TESS © Teat-end Environmental Sanitation System units underwent final testing in 1989.

By this time this device had evolved to take on a versatile low cost form character attribute of being an added Interface unit appendage between dairy animal and machine, containing prophylactic properties, a pronounced payload capacity, and because the bulk portion of the system was actually worn by the animals themselves (attached with bio type adhesives to hair follicles of the cow's udder), an attached retention or survivability performance rating of over six months was observed.

Although designed as a stand alone system, early on in this systems development it was realized that this device would allow for a lower cost total automated (robotic) machine application due to the just gained solution of standardizing all forms of dairy animal from an automated artificial intelligence, teat placement recognition, and logic machine device standpoint; it other words the TESS ©unit rendered every animal the same fingerprint as to otherwise variable aspects such as animal teat placement and udder cleanliness. This attribute to this day still offers a tremendously lower cost total system than is currently being pursued by the dairy robotics industry.

The device was however a proprietary prototype, lacked investment and to date has never seen beta development in the intended total automated forms. (A spin-off medical delivery epidermal patch system was also developed and tested / utilized) Further, it (the TESS unit) was felt at the time (1989) to be too far ahead of the robotic technology it sought to enhance to be accepted and useful.

Strange as it may seem, this device became one of the first reasons for my greater interest and involvement in pasture studies and utilization. It occurred at this time in 1989, after studying the potential utilization of the TESS milking device and connected systems that Blueshift Instruments was able to foresee and declare different methods that the technology would be utilized, and decided Pasture Systems utilization would be demanding a major role in the ultimate future use and location of that device. Blueshift Instruments still believes this devices further development could lower the cost and increase the performance of all levels of automated milking parlor and robotic milking technology for all breed of Cow, Goat, and Sheep to a more palatable level and in so doing, render low-cost pasture systems or field robotics systems a much more viable automated future.

Additionally however, some people see field milking parlors and field robotics as a threat to down home family farms, an assumption that I cannot agree with. In evaluating the inclusion of this technology I'm compelled to assume that it would maintain as many persons or more within the scope of family farms as it does invite exploitation by commercial interests and the so called industrial agriculture or factory farm type venues. I use however the land as my judge and the best practice's upon the land as a qualifier and while including technology where appropriate, surmised that this feature would be included in the future of truly sustainable family farm systems large and small. Good soil and pasture management often relies on very brief but intense animal pressure, especially in dry brittle environments. I feel we all must modernize to an appropriate level (sometimes intensely so) within that parameter, so that we can attract and maintain as needed, the high caliber individuals we need to grow into and maintain profitable agricultural dairy and farming systems in the future, family systems included.

I believe pastures and robotics where made for each other. Envisioned (now for sometime), in the very near future are self-contained automated milking units orbiting paddocks where the pastures are, away from the milk-houses maintaining the fixed primary bulk milk-tank and other ( if ) necessarily fixed utilities and services. Very soon you may find yourself seasonally milking only a third of your animals ( or none at all ) on a given day, with a pasture field robotic capable milking unit having sought to the rest. These same units could also be programmed to be the automated gateway by which animals are cut and sorted or rotated to advance to new pasture paddock stays. In those systems where bulk milk hauling trucks cannot access the current pasture system stay, milk may have to be picked up or harvested from pasture and handled perhaps twice as often by specialized milk hauling equipment, but the inconvenience on farms with properly maintained laneways could be minimized. The Elysian Fields model invites and allows for both science and nature; between that which may be ideal, or the more typical and conventional of systems. The idea being that this model would levitate to the capability of the farmer's situation and circumstance.

PASTURE SLAUGHTER FACILITIES:

In the interest of sustainability, versatility, and viability it quickly becomes apparent that under the application of the above systems that the utilities needed to accomplish home meat processing of dairy slaughter animals (Steers, bulls, and cows), pastured poultry, pastured pigs, and too beef slaughter plants etc. utilizing mobile units such as the described dairy units above. Pastured Poultry is increasingly accepted in the marketplace. These units would leave a trail of well-designed and maintained tankage in field composting areas, cycling opposite the dairy facility. These apparatus consist of a Blueshift Instruments built facility.

IN SOD STEP-IN TOMBSTONE FEED BUNKS, COMFORT STALLS AND STANCIONS:

A simple pasture based in-field stall or stanchion barn can also be made as easily as the in-field milking parlor. Where ever utilities ( water, electric ) and a suitable tarp and hoop structure on high and dry ground can be provided, so too can a dairyperson have a temporary stall barn. In this design the brisket board is stake pinned to the ground and the stalls, headboards, water supply, feeding surfaces, etc. are themselves pinned at ground points and / or attached to the brisket board system. Takes an hour or so to set-up and another hour to teardown and move to the next desired locale. Again, this can be directed to areas needing manure, etc.

INVISIABLE SUB-PERIMETER FENCE FOR PASTURED COWS:

We are all familiar with the yard and lawn pet dog retention system that relies on a shallow buried perimeter wire and radio dog collar. A simple variant can provide paddock sub-divides. The TESS device devised by Blueshift Instruments in the early eighties had ample payload capacity to accomplish this task or a radio collar system as would be worn as a cow identification system would serve the purpose as well. Addressing mobility again, one can see how easy it would be to deposit a control wire on the surface of the ground between the points you desire a divisional paddock barrier to be located; and how much more easily it will be to move this surface laid wire time and time again as you move animals across the pasture paddock sward than even a conventional step-in fiber-post and wire system. At most it may periodically need to be pinned at the ends to maintain a straight line or such other intentional maneuver around obstacles.

MOBILE BUNK-LINE FEEDER:

Wagon gears so designed providing mobile in-line bunk space in a train of wheeled devices, towed from one field locale to the next to eliminate the need to grain and TMR mixes on bare ground as a method of enhancing consumption of feed while moving manure targeted deposit areas. This method differs from a bunk wagon, where the animals have full access to all sides of the wagon for feed. The feed-line concept assists in animal control by allowing access to only one side of the feeding device while a typical TMR mixer wagon feed system uses the other as usual. Used tractor tires are a good temporary feeding apparatus with a similar function also.

IN-FIELD WATER - AIRCONDITIONING:

Mobile unit Atomized or Mist Water Spray and Drip Systems used for saturating cows and providing then for a non-solar limiting natural heat relief during the hottest weather. I recommend a pasture only station system design be supplied where grazing cows can walk through freely on a pasture walking rotation cycle of drinking, grazing, cooling,. This system may double as a pasture irrigation system for it deposits a tremendous amount of water via mist. It can quickly create mudded areas, and so must be moved often as needed. If you try to provide sun blocking at this pasture station, I don't think you will be able to maintain correct traffic patterns; the cows will bunch up here and stay all day long

LANEWAYS AND WATER SYSTEMS

To facilitate access to the above one will need to solve for at least a minimum amount of pasture laneway and standard or hybrid water system infrastructure. These should be the highest affordable quality available as water and access are second to none in importance. Graziers should be as willing and prepared to facilitate water delivery outside of pipeline delivery systems with as sophisticated a vehicle or apparatus as chemical spray applicator providers deliver their liquid based chemicals delivery systems infield. High floatation tires, all- wheel drive vehicles and the like to create the type of access we will need. Some will say, Well now, you are recreating the very sub-systems you intended to eliminate, but no; these new systems duties will be solved on different levels on different farms as is appropriate to those farms; some with common available materials and some with high tech or new solutions. Either way most important is the driving force and the dynamics of the super system have been changed such that problem matrix will have been changed; It will no longer align with standard conventional system downfalls, the single farm demographics will have been changed away from the standard model and its pitfalls, thus a much healthier and stronger agri-super system appears.

Conclusions:

Initiatives in Future Pasture Super System Design

..animal units between 10 and 10,000 or more..

I happen to live in the Upstate, Finger Lakes Region of New York State ( Farmington, N.Y., USA ) and this application is presently solely formulated and intent for this immediate locale and / or the greater Great Lakes Region ( Northeast ) Corridor of the U.S.A.. My immediate concern is that of current suburban sprawl. People are ever increasingly unaware of the on goings of everyday agriculture activities around them. My home farmlands where I grew up are threatened by this paradox element. My family farm partners have acquired 12 separate farms over time. We long ago lost most of our rural or farm oriented political base in my area, in part, via our own successful expansions and land acquisitions which in turn left fewer principles involved in the succession of a given farm land, political, and tax base. What farm base is left operating seems currently to be desperately politically geared toward dizzily maintaining myopic conventional agri-systems only. These same individuals ( an aging population ) are often tapped to advise the remaining non-farm political base, on both county and state levels and too often joined by the ever growing non- farming public, as to the parameters on which to proceed on questions concerning local agricultural based circumstances that they too now know very little about; as a result this same advice ( and so the resulting decisions ) are often incorrectly tainted toward conventional farming techniques of old with all its inherent costs, at the expense of nurturing and marketing progressive sustainable ones.

As I have said, in this ( my ) area, I do believe that Pasture Based Agriculture is the highest order land use for much of the land. Of that order, near organic sod based ( natural farming ) production standards are perhaps the ultimate of such use. It helps to know that the Elysian Fields Project Model answers the call for suggested attribute solutions with the ability to conform and be utilized in the smallest, to largest ( and sometimes temporarily rented ) of appropriate land-plots. But, for this to happen in my region, local perception of the valued intent of this type sustainable farming project needs to be thoroughly understood by the political agriculturalists and non-farmers alike, and if accepted, nurtured and garnered by local government development ( by means of local laws effecting interpretations of agricultural building and zoning codes and farmland and farm animal political solace ) embracing newer next generation sustainable farming language and methods. Finally I want to remind readers that this model is based on and intended to be of commercial value to all agricultural industries involved ( both suppliers and users ).

(Questions abound as to how this or that concept within the ongoing model came to be derived or included; in an attempt to further assist independent study and replication within this open architecture format, something on the order of an online discussion board, Fundamentals of, The Elysian Fields Project is currently in the works and being written to be added to the www.ahtuttle.com website. It is hoped that it too may assist, and influence in some good direction toward ones own Elysian Fields within their region.)

The writer, The Real Man From Elysian Fields Royal A. Purdy is the owner of A. H. Tuttle and Company, business representative for ( Blueshift Instruments, Elysian ©, Sustainable High Tensile, The Elysian Fields Project, Clear Choice © Land Management and Farmington - Canandaigua Lake Country Fireworks ). He works privately as a commercial sustainable high tensile systems developer - installer and consultant ( Elysian © Sustainable High Tensile and JAKBILT © Post Driver sales ( 315 ) 986 – 7007 )), He lives (Lat.42.97/Long-77.34) and his family dairy farms in the Upstate, Finger Lakes Region (Farmington - Canandaigua ), New York, USA with his wife Nancy H. Purdy and three sons.

Questions and Answers: Please note, feel free to join in on the Discussion Board available at (http://www.ahtuttle.com/phpBB2) for on-going discussion of these topics and more.

Do seed pellets really work? Yes, they do! I've tried them with grass and clover seed, these are a nice easy type seed variety to start. With this size seed you can give yourself some practice and scope on the basics, and the ability to see them work. Many people believe they can get by without seed pellets in their pasture reseeding routines, and certainly they are correct; but with proper testing and practice, I think individuals will find that they can inter-seed an increasing variety of seed types. To date, regional protocols need to be established, guiding folks as to the scope of the techniques involved in using seed pellets. I'm told this regional type acceptance will come by individuals watching their neighbor try seed pellets a little bit by bit. People believe what they see and understand. In a few years time, regional groups will develop acceptable attitudes and techniques and it multiplies from there.

I've read the Elements, of The Elysian Fields Project, but how would all this work, and what's in it for me?

Above all, I want people to avoid train wrecks. Some of the Projects Element methods are such that they have the ability to quickly get people in over their heads in trouble. Please understand just what you are trying to attempt. One needn't attempt more than a single element at a time. Too many elements on ones plate without proper consideration to risk is asking for trouble. Perhaps first consider testing a single element of the project, then with time decide to apply your results, or not, more over; only then moving on to another element or small group of connected elements of the Project.

To describe the predicted comprehensive abilities of the Project, I most often give people a starting point of a sample bare (field) pasture as the most explanatory and clear means of proposal. The frequent example I submit is first perimeter fence and water.